The invention relates to documents comprising a cover, at least one internal page, a radiofrequency microcontroller and an antenna electrically connected to contact pads of said microcontroller. It relates more specifically to identification documents such as passports.
Since the terrorist attacks of 2001, the United States Department of Homeland Security has wanted the world to agree on a standard for machine-readable passports. These passports would include an embedded microcontroller that would allow the passport to contain more information than a machine-readable character font. They would include a contactless communication interface that would allow passport officials to quickly and easily read that information.
Radiofrequency identification (RFID) technology appears to comply with the above requirements.
However, there are some concerns about using this technology for passports.
For instance, in an article dated 4 Oct. 2004 of the International Herald Tribune, it was written: “These [RFID] chips are like smart cards, but they can be read from a distance. A receiving device can “talk” to the chip remotely, without any need for physical contact, and get whatever information is on it. [ . . . ] It means that passport holders are continuously broadcasting their name, nationality, age, address and whatever else is on the RFID chip. It means that anyone with a reader can learn that information, without the passport holder's knowledge or consent. It means that pickpockets, kidnappers and terrorists can easily—and surreptitiously—pick Americans or nationals of other participating countries out of a crowd.”.
This article is obviously sensationalistic in nature. However, despite this sensationalism, the article depicts a real commercial issue and a solution has value.
An existing solution is an electromagnetic shielding bag commercialised under the brand name mobileCloak™, into which bag is placed a passport or other contactless product. A similar solution to the mobileCloak™ bag is disclosed in the article of Mr. Matt Hines, 24 Feb. 2004, CNET News.com. This article refers to the RSA Blocker Tag technology introduced by the company RSA Security™. The RSA Blocker Tag is an RFID cloaking system intended to guard proprietary data located on chips used to carry product information. It uses a jamming system designed to confuse RFID readers and prevent some devices from tracking data on individuals or goods outside certain boundaries. It works by emitting radio frequencies designed to trick RFID readers into believing that they are presented with unwanted data, or spam, causing the information collection devices to shun the incoming transmission. When an RFID-loaded product is placed into a bag bearing at least one blocker tag, the system would cause RFID readers to miss any information carried by the product, thereby protecting consumers. When the product is taken out of the bag, readers would again be able to scan the RFID chip of the RFID-loaded product accurately. According to RSA Security™, this cloaking system would not interfere with the normal operation of RFID systems or allow hackers to use security technology to bypass theft control systems or launch denial-of-service attacks.
In fact, placing an RFID device into an electromagnetic shielding bag as in the above solutions may effectively prevent surreptitious attacks against RFID products, but this requires an additional effort and inconvenience for the user of the product. This inconvenience indicates a suboptimal solution, especially in the mass market where users frequently forego such inconveniences.
Other solutions have been proposed. One of these is disclosed in an article dated 20 Sep. 2004, Computerworld™, of Mark Willoughby. In this article, Ms Sue Hutchinson, Director of EPCglobal™ U.S., said “Part of our standards development was a second-generation UHF air interface protocol, the protocol that manages data moving between the tags and readers. It includes some protection for data on the chip. When data is written to the tag, the data is masked going over the air interface. All of the data coming from the reader to the tag is masked, so parts of the write can't be intercepted as it's coming from the reader to the tag. Once data is written to the tag, it can be locked so that it can be read but not altered—it's read only”.
However, even while an authentication mechanism may prevent reading of the RFID tag data, repeated failed reading attempts may cause attack resistance code on the tag to disable the tag, thus leaving the tag vulnerable to denial of service attacks.
Considering the above, a problem according to the invention is to impede the unauthorised or surreptitious reading of contactless documents, in particular, identification documents such as passports.